Our 3 Favorite Free Online Image Editors For Education

Learning how to use image editing software can be difficult and time consuming. And, teaching students how to use it can be even more challenging. Luckily, there are several free, online alternatives to bulky editors like Photoshop.

These slimmed-down editors allow novice users to quickly become comfortable editing digital images, and are also excellent stepping stones for students who want to learn how to use more complex editors later on.

Our Top Picks

To help you and your students create your own amazing images, we’ve compiled a list of our 3 favorite online photo editors. In order to be on the list, each of these tools must meet these three requirements:

It is free to use.

It requires no registration.

It provides educators and students with an intuitive, easy-to-learn photo editing tool.

Picadilo is a robust yet intuitive photo editor that gives your students the freedom to do almost anything they want with their images. In their own words the Picadilo suite of tools, “consists of many different and unique instruments to help you in obtaining the exact results you want: brushes, selections, effects and anything else that has the power to enhance photographs.”

Just click on the Photo Editor or Photo Collage option to choose what kind of image you want to create.

Simple one-click or drag-and-drop tools make applying effects very easy.

The photo collages use several pre-set formats, and can be easily resized. This makes creating a large header image for your blog just as easy as creating a narrow, stacked image to use in a sidebar area.

Adding text to the picture was confusing. Once you know where to type, it’s OK but it took a minute to figure out you had to type into the text box instead of clicking on the picture to add text.

The only direct sharing option is to Facebook. While it’s very easy to save a picture and share it wherever you want, most users are accustomed to more built-in sharing options nowadays.

In the Photo Collage mode, it’s not entirely intuitive to click the red gear icon in order to switch between tools, layout and styles. The Photo editor mode, on the other hand, has a menu that displays all options at once.

Pixlr is the image editor for every one. Their site provides 3 different levels of editing that allow you to make the process as simple or as involved as you want it to be.

Pixlr O-Matic is a very simple editor that is very similar to Instagram. Choose your picture, or take a picture using your webcam. Then use a pre-set selection of filters, borders and overlays to customize your image.

Pixlr Express is the next step up. It allows you to pull in an image from your computer, from a URL, or to take one with your webcam. It also allows you to create a collage. The collage mode only allows you to upload pictures from your computer though.

While Express does provide more editing options than Pixlr O-Matic, the editing menu is very simple and the options are limited enough not to become overwhelming. It provides a full selection of adjustment, overlay, border, text, sticker and effects tools while keeping the interface very user-friendly.

Pixlr Editor is Pixlr’s most comprehensive image editor. The interaction in this editor is very comparable to Photoshop, and it is definitely for more advanced users. If you’re looking for a free Photoshop alternative, this is great, but not recommended for the casual user.

Fotor is a other easy-to-use editor. Just click the “Edit a Photo” button on their homepage to get started. Fotor provides a set of simple editing and “beauty” retouching tools that give you a lot of options without making it too tricky.

They also have a Cover Photo tool that makes creating a background cover photo for networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and several others very easy. Many of the background options are reserved for paid users. Still, if you want to create a nice, simple header image using a solid color or one of your images as a background, then this tool will be just fine.

What makes Fotor a little less appealing overall is that they are a little more aggressive on getting users to sign up. It’s not always clear cut what is free and what is not. Most of their tools are free, but you won’t know something is not until you click on it. Their small red diamond icons do show which tools are for paid users, but these icons are hard to see and until you use the tool for a while you barely notice them at all.

Overall, the basic editing tools are great and will satisfy the needs of most casual users. The more advanced options may require you to sign up, or they may just be too hard to figure out on your own.

Pros:

Easy to use tools for basic editing and retouching.

Easy to save images with different quality levels: normal, high, or highest. Tells you image file size as when saving.

Has a collage option with a simple drag-and-drop interface to add multiple pictures and easy layout options.

I’m a teacher, I personally use FOTOR and Gimp as free desktop tool, and I’m satisfied. Fotor is easy to manipulate, however, Gimp took me some time to play around with it’s various options from simple photo editing to making gifs, creating logos and many other options.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. We debated including GIMP as part of this post, but decided to stick to online editors for this one. We’ll most likely do another post on desktop options down the road.

Just spent a few minutes playing with PicMonkey. It is another great tool. I’m not sure why I didn’t come across this when I did my initial searches, but definitely another good one to add to the list! Thank you for sharing.

I am excited to try these tools out, but I am a tried and true fan of PicMonkey! I only wish it had an app so I could use it with my iPad. But any time I use a computer, it is definitely my first choice!

Hi Melinda. Thanks for sharing. When I did my initial searches I didn’t come across PicMonkey for some reason. I have used it since though and it is a great tool. I would recommend it right along side these other three as a great go-to editor for teachers and students.

My students (grade 6) enjoy PicMonkey and BeFunky. They have Chromebooks & they download the app from the Chrome app store. The pixlr lineup allows those with more knowledge to use it. Others stick with simpler editing. This opens the discussion of who owns photos, are news photos edited, and what is Creative Commons.

I love pixlr very much as i am using that from last 5 year, recently Autodesk has buy pixlr, and they have also come up with paid verison of pixlr, Recently i come across a new editor same like pixlr, KNown as http://www.toolpic.com the good thing is it is 100% same like pixlr, and have all paid features of pixlr in there free version. Like most i like its animation feature and also many shortcut effect which are made to click and apply. Hope this helps your user